CAIN
A downloadable game
Humanity is cursed, host to a roiling psychic sea barely understood or controlled, a phenomenon arising purely from the darkest portions of the human soul. While most humans are blissfully unaware of its presence, others are more sensitive. When it grows wild in these hosts, SINS appear, terrifying supernatural monsters that are anathema to reality itself.
CAIN is the solution, the global supranational shadow organization dedicated solely to the hunting and execution of sins. It’s mission is clear, its purpose steadfast. Is there anything better than a good hunt? Just think, you’re all set to slaughter to your heart’s content.
YOU are an exorcist, a powerful psychic soldier and tool of CAIN, honed and wielded for one purpose:
WIPE OUT THE STAIN
From Tom Bloom (Magnagothica Maleghast/Lancer RPG): a new narrative role playing game about playing psychic death soldiers hunting monstrosities made of human trauma. So it goes.
Includes:
- Rules for making exorcists, powerful psychic soldiers on a campaign of extermination. Nascent monstrosities themselves, they must struggle against the limits of their own expanding powers and bodies.
- Rules for creating sins, psychic abominations created when their hosts' latent psychic powers burst free of their body, spurred on by trauma and suffering. Unraveling the mysteries behind their birth and the tragic circumstances of their hosts can weaken them and be used as a weapon in the final confrontation, lending equal weight to investigation and combat.
- Rules for running hunts: tense investigations that culminate in a climactic execution scene inside of the lair of the beast
- Character sheets and hunt sheets for easy organization
- Over 150 pages of insanity, art, and stickers with an aesthetic inspired by lo-fi manga, visual collage, and barber beats album covers.
Slash, and slash, and SLASH AWAY. UNTIL IT IS DONE.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $9.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
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Community Copy
If you can't afford the game or are in a region where regional pricing is prohibitive, please help yourself to a free copy.
Development log
- 1.3 Update44 days ago
- CAIN 1.2 is out!Jun 03, 2025
- CAIN update 1.1Oct 31, 2024
- Quick update to fix font issuesAug 02, 2024
Comments
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Hi Tom,
On pages 52, 53, and 153 the blasphemies are listed in order. Jaunt is listed as the tenth blasphemy and Palace is listed as the eleventh blasphemy. However, when the actual blasphemies and their abilities are listed out from pages 54-77, Palace ends up being 10th in order and Jaunt eleventh. It's a very small inconsistency I know, but I figured you may want to know since I've seen no one else mention it. Much love, CAIN is great.
Hello Tom! Is there a Discord community of CAIN?
There is both the CHASM Discord sercer or the unofficial CAIN Discord server. The latter is quite large (4k members).
In the world of Cain, humanity is a vast open wound, bleeding their pain, their joy, their sorrow, and their dreams into the psychic mélange that makes up the background radiation of our reality. Sometimes though, that wound is too deep, and the background becomes so dense that it becomes something physical. To the titular organization from which this TTRPG gets its name, these beings are known only as SINS; and for the safety of mankind they must be exorcized from our reality. Your players will inhabit the roles of those dedicated to this practice. Exorcists; psychic agents whose own personal damage is at least currently manageable, sent to investigate and discover the source of the SIN. Designed and written by Tom Bloom (Kill Six Billion Demons), this game is part X-Files, part Chainsaw Man, and all about playing emotionally messy psychics trying to hold themselves together long enough to discover the traumatic event from which a psychic threat emerged.
-Excerpt from "Picking Your Second System" over on Goonhammer.com
The premise sounds similar to the Project Moon games, from the idea of distorted monstrosities emerging from broken human psyche to sins being an important element of the setting. Colour me interested.
Can I gift Cain to someone else?
Hey Tom, I have noticed that there are multiple references to occult rituals (pg. 37 for example), but there are no rules for how to use them, neither as players nor Admin. How would we rule these? Was it something you meant to include, but forgot/decided against?
Hi Tom, I emailed you this a while ago, but just in case I’ll repost it here.
thanks, each of these are like a stab wound i will cherish
Hey Tom! Long time listener, first time caller.
On page 19, the "p" in "potential" is not bold but the rest of the word is.
Keep sinning!
Hi Tom,
On the Whisper blasphemy (pg. 67), the text for Omnipresence seems to be wrapping around weirdly. (the 'E' is dropping to a new line) Also, a smaller thing, but on the Absentia hook (pg. 64), there's a punctuation missing. "...heal the injury If you have..."
Anyways, love the game and am excited to check out the new Games for Freaks.
thanks, you are required to kill me instantly if i make a typo
Hey Tom, on Page 40 when talking about the Sin Talisman it still says "6+CAT+Pressure" instead of 8, thought I'd point it out to avoid any confusion
Once CAIN is complete is there the possibility for a physical release?
Hi Tom,
On the char sheet it says to keep control/gain a sin mark on a roll of 7 or lower, and in the rules section on sin overflow it says 6 or less. I assume the rules section takes precedence?
Game looks very fun, and beautiful art as always.
6 or less, I will fix this in an update in the next wk or two, thanks for pointing it out.
Is there a way to download older version of CAIN? Looking at the changelogs it seems like my group would prefer the older versions but i cant find how to get them.
I was wondering this too.
Are you considering translating the system into another language? I'm from Brazil, and my group is experiencing some difficulties due to the language barrier.
Oh if we could fan translate it...
Any progress on fan translations? I would like to help get this gem to portuguese.
Me too! It would be awesome to have an semi-official translation
I just wanted to say that your work has genuinely re-sparked my love for tabletop gaming. I'm going to be running my first game of CAIN this upcoming Thursday. Also, please make more Drifter entries; they are genuinely so interesting and remind me of old SCP articles I read when I was younger.
this is some good stuff, really hope you'll release an edition with the stuff from Games For Freaks integrated into it
I think this has been asked before, but couldn't find an answer. Is there a printer friendly version of this and if not, is there a plan for one to be made at some point?
I do plan to make a plaintext version without art for ease of use.
Does the game support long campaigns?
I'd say so! some friends and I have been playing almost weekly since march 2025. if your Administrator is doing multi-session hunts it should last a bit. the game is structured so you have to do quite a few before you max out your character
"Rule of Nature: When you inflict violence with an action, if you roll 6, 6 or better the action inflicts 1 more slash on any talismans and you regain 1 psyche burst."
is it supposed to say "5, 6 or better"? Under the Beast Agenda.
Double sixes, so if you roll a dice pool and get multiple sixes, it activates
Feels like it could be worded more clearly, is that a standard phrasing that they borrow?
My table is a bit confused about Blast when used by an Ardence. Blast says that its strength scales with CAT. Ardence’s passive lets them increase the CAT of their powers by 2.
Does this mean anything special for Blast, like it does 2 extra slashes, since “its strength scales with CAT”?
bonus question: The Category chart says using higher/lower CAT effects is more/less effective. If I use a CAT 2 power on a CAT 1 Sin, should it get a +1D or what? What about +2D if jt’s CAT 3 vs 1?
Inner Furnace only affects powers you get from Ardence. Blast is a default blasphemy, so it doesn't count as an Ardence power.
is there a print friendly version?
I saw that there are a few ablities that referince "as the hour passes" what does that mean?
should be 'when pressure increases'
I'm kind of confused by the awarding of xp for fulfilling agenda items. Do you get 2 xp if you fulfill both items in one session? As is that even possible for agendas like Beast where they have to hold back AND get into a fight?
You get XP for following the unbolded agenda item. You also gain 1 XP for following any one bolded agenda item. You also gain 1 xp for following any two+ bolded agenda items.
All three give you XP separately, so you can get up to 3 if you fulfill all three (the first bolded you do counts for both the last two).
tyvm
If at one point during the session you get into a fight, and at another you hold back, that counts as fulfilling both items
Page 31 of 1.2: It reads:
I believe it should be "excess", not "access".
And here it should probably be "increases" instead of "increass". Sorry if this isn't the place to post it (I can delete these if so); I'm just posting feedback asap after buying it.
Page 46. I think it's missing an "it" between "though" and "doesn't".
Page 51, shady lender should say "once" instead of "one", I think.
I know this may not be the case but it kinda reminds me of jujutsu kaisen. Just from the main page pictures alone.
Found some issues. The first one is on page 11 or page 6 (Right) has "it" next to the if, the second one is on page 26 or page 14 (Left) is missing the word "to" and the letter "s" at the end of character, the third one is on page 52 or 27 (Left) has the words "hand motions" mixed up, and the fourth one is on page 64 or page 33 (Left) is a pdf error.
I would appreciate a better place to put these if you have one.
I love CAIN, but it has so many little typos and grammar mistakes like this... Hope we can get an update correcting some of it!
I hope that there's a better spot to post these though. It's a great ttrpg, and I don't want to be the reason why others don't try it out.
The discord probably has a spot for those, though IDK, Im not in it.
thanks!
Urban Fantasy perfection! I only hope we can see it balanced and a few more games for freaks volumes. But otherwise the fans have got this going. Thanks Tom.
actually the best ttrpg fucking ever holy guacamole
Fr. D&D should take notes.
This is the pinnacle of rpg design. Is there any possibility we will get a physical book?
yeah PLEASE. I need a physical book.
PoD or even print friendly PDF might be enough, but a proper fancy book would be amazing.
I need a CAIN comic now Abbadon. You can't keep doing this to me!
Please make the 1.2 CAINsheet editable!
I want to be able to write on it
Hi! We have a community made editable Character Sheet !
100% compatible with the official sheet :3
Here the sheet:
https://norman-noone.itch.io/cain-editable-sheet
And here Tom's itch collection of canon + community stuff for Cain:
https://itch.io/c/5737113/cain-expanded-universe
EDIT: I'll also update a 1.2 version this evening :D
i approved this btw and it rules
I bought the game and all my friends are gonna play digital, i saw somewhere that i have to ask permission to share the game file so would i be able to share it and or be allowed too? if not is there something else i can do instead?
Does there happen to be a place I can access the update notes text file from 1.1? I am using the 1.2 text notes to trace through the changes in the new book, but I never looked at the 1.1 changes. (By the way the 1.2 changes are very cool, I cannot wait to "accidentally" blow up my friends with Fury)
Hello, I am thinking of printing CAIN but books are kinda hard to update. Is the game nearing something like a final update?
no
Thank you so much for the PAGES version.
- I have a rule question: for the lord sin’s severe attack, do you remove a dice if the target answers no or do you remove it if they answer yes? I feel like I might be over complicating it but it seems unclear to me.
From what I understand, you're to remove the die if the answer is "yes".
Thanks a lot for the pages version! I will order a lulu copy asap.
Has anyone tried and can tell me if it’s a solo game or not? GMless or not?
CAIN probably runs best as a group game due to how (relatively) lethal a session or Hunt can be. A GM is required in this case to set up the investigation for the players.
I think Solo Play is possible, I've certainly tried (and am trying) workshopping a system to do so, but it will require making some adjustments to how investigations are run.
Thank you very much for your feedback. Much appreciated. :D
i would really appreciate a single page format
theres kind of a lot in here to fit in one page
Oh, i meant the pdf being a single pages instead of sheets, thankfully 1.2 just did that!
Hi! We have a community made editable Character Sheet ! 100% compatible with the official sheet :3 Here the sheet: https://norman-noone.itch.io/cain-editable-sheet
And here Tom's itch collection of canon + community stuff for Cain:
https://itch.io/c/5737113/cain-expanded-universe EDIT: I'll also update a 1.2 version this evening :D
Would it be too much to ask for a Brazilian Portuguese version? Pls '-'